Cardamone prosecutors cite hitman's case

February 08, 2010

In a strategy aimed at obtaining the conviction of an Aurora gymnastics coach on retrial on charges he sexually abused young girls, DuPage County prosecutors have evoked the case of a Chicago gangster who was convicted of murder after winning an earlier acquittal in the same case.

Assistant DuPage County State's Attorney Alex McGimpsey told Judge Blanche Hill Fawell on Monday that he has filed a motion asking to vacate the "not guilty" findings involving seven of the former gymnasts who claimed they had been molested by Michael Cardamone at his family's gymnastics school in Aurora.

Cardamone was accused in 2005 with inappropriately touching 14 girls. A DuPage County jury convicted him of abusing seven of the girls and acquitted him of abusing seven others.

The convictions and a 20-year sentence he received were thrown out in 2008 by the Second District Illinois Appellate Court, which cited various trial errors and ordered a new trial. The retrial is pending, but no date for it has been set.

Cardamone has continually denied all charges and said he has consistently refused numerous plea settlement attempts from DuPage County State's Attorney Joseph Birkett.

The prosecution's new motion cites the case of Harry Aleman, a Chicago crime syndicate figure who was acquitted of the 1972 murder of a union official by a Cook County judge. When it became known that the judge, who subsequently committed suicide, received a bribe for the acquittal, a federal court approved a 1997 retrial, which resulted in a guilty verdict and a 300-year conviction.

DuPage prosecutors claim in their motion that Cardamone's estranged wife, Elizabeth, as well as his mother, Linda Lynch, and an employee of the gym, Andrea Arndt, lied during the 2005 trial, allowing "the defendant to employ fraud and collusion to obtain the findings of not guilty."

The motion acknowledges the concept of double jeopardy protection from a defendant being tried twice for the same crime but says those protections "came into being where the accused is fairly found not guilty."

Defense attorney Joseph Laria told Fawell he had no comment but would respond at a March 8 hearing on the issue.

"Today's motion is in direct retaliation against me in my fight to prove my innocence," said Michael Cardamone, who is free on $500,000 bond. "This case is an excellent example of malicious prosecution. The appellate court overturned this because I was not given a fair trial in DuPage County. Their office has done everything they can to defer and hinder me from proving the facts in this case, which proved my innocence."